Terrorists linked to the Islamic State had made the satirical newspaper “Charlie Hebdo” an absolute target.
On January 7, 2015, by targeting the offices of the satirical newspaper “Charlie Hebdo”, the killers appeared to follow the instructions given in particular by the Islamic State group and complete a revenge linked to the publication of caricatures of Mohammed by the weekly in 2006.
On an amateur video filmed during the attack from a nearby roof, one of the black-clad shooters, Kalashnikov in hand, can be heard yelling “Allah akbar!” (“God is great!”) then another “We killed Charlie Hebdo!” before one of them shot a wounded police officer lying on the ground at point blank range.
The weekly threatened on several occasions
For several years, the weekly has been threatened by the radical Islamist movement – its premises were burned in 2011, its director threatened with beheading – and for months, before the attack on January 7, 2015, jihadists and Islamist leaders in the Middle East and Africa are calling for volunteers to take action against France, which they criticize for its involvement, in several theaters. In Iraq, Paris is participating in airstrikes carried out by the international coalition against the jihadists of the Islamic State. In Africa, France is at the forefront of the fight against terrorism with its Barkhane system: 3,000 men deployed in five countries in the Sahel-Saharan region.
“We are targeting lay people who dared to mock the prophet”
“It is obvious that from the first publication of the Mohammed caricatures, Charlie had become a symbol, a target,” assures Louis Caprioli, former head of counterterrorism at the DST. “They had never forgotten and forgiven what they considered to be a supreme insult. The choice of this target is loaded with symbols: we are targeting lay people, who dared to mock the prophet. In their eyes, it is divine vengeance.”
Target lists
Islamist terrorists have a long memory, and when they choose a target, they do not deviate from it over the years. Thus, they attacked the World Trade Center towers in New York twice, the first time by detonating a truck bomb in its basements in 1993 and then by causing them to collapse on September 11, 2001.
Lists of targets – always the same – circulate within the radical movement, on websites, in recordings, forums, and speeches by jihadist leaders. And the mission is given to all those who can to try to achieve them…
